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Author Topic: Switching from Winamp or iTunes  (Read 32916 times)

JimH

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Switching from Winamp or iTunes
« on: April 21, 2014, 07:23:45 am »

I thought I'd start a thread to try to make the transition easier.  Here's our wiki link on iTunes:

http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/ITunes

At the bottom of that page is a link back to Interact that discusses how to import iTunes playlists, a common question here.

Thanks.
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JimH

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Re: Switching from Winamp or iTunes
« Reply #1 on: April 21, 2014, 07:26:59 am »

This is a also for discussion related to Winamp.

If anyone has found solutions to problems related to the transition, please post them or links to threads where they were discussed.

Thanks.
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JimH

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Re: Switching from Winamp or iTunes
« Reply #2 on: April 29, 2014, 07:28:44 am »

Thanks to Maeghaus for this:

iTunes Playlist Tutorial
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MrC

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Re: Switching from Winamp or iTunes
« Reply #3 on: April 29, 2014, 01:39:42 pm »

I updated my convMCPlaylist.pl script do handle iTunes' XML files on the Mac.  This eliminates steps 2-5 on Maeghaus' post, and will do the conversion for one or more XML files automatically.

   http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=88329.msg605680#msg605680

I had no idea that MC could import these XML files, so Maeghaus' post was very nice.
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CiXel

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Re: Switching from Winamp or iTunes
« Reply #4 on: May 01, 2014, 09:12:52 pm »

Has anyone found an alternative solution for Dynamic / variable crossfade like that found in the SQRsoft output winamp plugin? This doesn't seem to work with JRiver as it's an output type winamp plugin.
http://www.sqrsoft.com.ar/index.php?show=1&cont_id=products&contitem_id=acf

http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=67649.msg454191#msg454191
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JimH

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Re: Switching from Winamp or iTunes
« Reply #5 on: May 04, 2014, 10:48:51 am »

I don't know what dynamic crossfade is.  MC has crossfade that can be customized a little.  It's in the track change section under audio settings.
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MusicHawk

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Re: Switching from Winamp or iTunes
« Reply #6 on: August 07, 2014, 08:47:03 pm »

UPDATE: For years, across various versions of MC, I've used a Winamp plugin called Piettro Pro's RockSteady, a configurable audio compressor that is far more effective than others I've tried (including what's in MC20) for what I need: MC playback that sounds like radio station playback.

In MC20, RockSteady works ... BUT its UI no longer is accessible. Fortunately, the default settings are OK, but I'd love to tweak it.

See the UI and get the plugin here, the author's site:
http://debian.fmi.uni-sofia.bg/~piettropro/MyPrograms/

RockSteady's UI used to be available in MC, not sure when in MC's evolution it disappeared (MC18, maybe). It would be nice have access to the UI, which provides many adjustments. Solving its disappearance might help a range of Winamp plugins.

The author of RockSteady seems to have not touched it since 2000, so likely only MC could solve the UI problem.
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Maeghaus

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Re: Switching from Winamp or iTunes
« Reply #7 on: September 07, 2014, 04:49:23 am »

I did not know until I looked at this post this morning that I was credited for revealing the XML import solution. I'm very glad to help JRiver in any way I can to make Media Center the kind of versatile program we all want it to be. I'm not a programmer but my background is in technical writing and I sort of think like a programmer that way. But anyway, I'm really quite humbled for the credit. I look forward to more adventures with JRiver and Media Center.

Sincerely, Tom (Maeghaus)  ;D
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Arcturus

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Re: Switching from Winamp or iTunes
« Reply #8 on: September 12, 2014, 06:35:31 pm »

I had probably been using Winamp since its very first version (Until I discovered this amazing software) I can't really think of any issues you might run into. Just pointing it at your media files and done.....

The only thing I can think of are albums that came with .cue files and also tracks where the album was showing up twice, That was very easy to fix though.
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Foxenhimr

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Re: Switching from Winamp or iTunes
« Reply #9 on: December 11, 2014, 10:31:09 am »

I find these threads can take so many directions based on people's specific needs, that it becomes very difficult to get a bird's-eye view of the process.  I have been a Itunes ( windows ) user for many years, synched to an Ipod classic ( 160GB). My library consists of mostly alac files, so I don't have a humongous number of music files - approx 15,000. I'm a very new user of MC20, and am still learning how it works.

What I'm not clear on is how many steps are involved in migrating my Itunes library to MC - do I need to "export" the library from Itunes, then "import" into MC ( 2 steps ), or is it something different ?  I'm not overly concerned about preserving playlists, but I guess it would be a bonus. I don't rate music, and don't care about numbers of plays, etc. Of greatest concern would be the integrity of the Artist/Album info and cover art.

Do I also understand that it is possible to synch MC with my classic ?

Any help is appreciated.
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ManAtWork

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Re: Switching from Winamp or iTunes
« Reply #10 on: January 24, 2015, 01:46:55 am »


In fact, as many hi-rec music available at Internet, and hi-rec portable music player.
I would think the following scenario is there in market:

People with at least one mobile device, say iPhone, or iPad.
But they also have another hi-rec portable music player for hi-rec music bought from Internet.
The point is they still have the music bought from iTunes, and will bought music from iTunes.
The issue is not one to replace another, but can MC20 works as a bridge to allow two options works perfectly together.
In fact, I am also one of the people in such scenario.
I would still keep and buy from iTunes since many pop songs would be distributed there.
I would also buy the high-rec music like classical music from other sources.
It would come with two libraries in my system (stored in my NAS).
I still couldn't figure out the best and simply way to work with these in MC, including sync with those mobile devices (different OS platforms)



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New Vermaje

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Re: Switching from Winamp or iTunes
« Reply #11 on: January 30, 2015, 01:54:08 am »

Hi !

I liked the plugin "WinAmp_Notify.exe" !

Is it possible to create a "clone" of this plugin for MC 20 ?

Thanks.

Jean-Marc
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andyKT

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Re: Switching from Winamp or iTunes
« Reply #12 on: May 16, 2015, 08:58:05 pm »

Hi,

I am not sure if this post fits in this topic. Otherwise move, please.

One Japanese user pointed out that there is no tag in MC
equivalent to iTunes's "sort artist" and "sort album".
Most Japanese Kanji characters have two ways of reading. Therefore,
artist's name can be read in two way, but only one is correct.
Currently, sort works on one of readings using JIS (Japan Industrial Standard) and
returns what we don't expect.
Can MC adds the tags such as "sort artist" and "sort album"?
I don't know how to change language of iTunes and I have not confirmed
 "sort artist" and "sort album" tags are the ones I saw on UI.
Attached picture (Mac) shows Japanese version of iTunes's a part of information window.
Any suggestions to solve this problem are appreciated.

Thanks

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tomotomo

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Re: Switching from Winamp or iTunes
« Reply #13 on: May 17, 2015, 12:47:40 am »

Hi,

 "読みがな" is "Soting", "読み" is "sort as"  in English version of iTune's.

Thanks.

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andyKT

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Re: Switching from Winamp or iTunes
« Reply #14 on: May 17, 2015, 05:00:20 am »

 Thank you for clarifying.
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JimH

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Re: Switching from Winamp or iTunes
« Reply #15 on: September 19, 2015, 07:07:20 am »

JRiver equivalents for iTunes functions:
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=100270.0
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chromedigi

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Re: Switching from Winamp or iTunes
« Reply #16 on: November 16, 2015, 11:46:04 am »

I'm contemplating switching from iTunes to JRiver, but before I undertake this pretty massive task, I have a few things I'd like to clarify. First, let me describe my situation. I've been using iTunes for years now. I only rip CDs, and I only create .m4a files. I have ripped multiple terabytes of music files, which iTunes cannot handle in a single library, so I periodically cull from my hard drive onto a backup disk, so that I can continue. In this way, I've accumulated a number of offline libraries on external disks as well as whatever current one is on my internal drive. Now that very large capacity drives have become cheap, I'd like to finally merge these various libraries. It looks like JRiver can probably handle the load, as it seems to have been built on a relational DB, rather than the dopey structure that iTunes uses. I would like to put my media library on a high-capacity expandable NAS with RAID.

As a portable player, I use an iPod Classic 160G unit, because (a) it has the largest capacity, and .m4a files are big, and (b) my car stereo knows how to interface with it, so I can operate it directly from the stereo interface (including seeing the album cover art, which is nice).

I am a heavy user of every single one of the Sort fields in iTunes. In fact, I wish there were more of them. For example, the artist Egg is quite distinct from The Egg. Since I don't want them intermixed, I use the sort fields to distinguish them. Similarly, "Charlie Parker" and "Charly Parker" are the same person, and I use sort fields to remap them, without altering the way the credit reads on release. I sort people by surname first, and also do stuff like sorting "Joe Blow feat. Jane Doe" as "Blow, Joe featuring Doe, Jane" - my credits read as on release, but sort logically.

I am also a heavy user of the "Comments" field, which iTunes power users like myself have long used as a place to store the best approximation we have to custom database fields, using substrings of the form key="value". In some cases, these are one-to-many relations, as in the case of CD cat#s, where a CD sometimes has more than one cat#, and I have logged them all, or many-to-many as where a CD is co-branded by more than one record label, and again, I have logged this info in my iTunes DB with multiple key/value pairs, e.g. label="Blue Note" label="EMI".

I dislike the treatment of "Genre" by iTunes (and most everybody else). Genres in actual reality form a lattice, rather than a simple list, or for that matter a hierarchical tree. I'd like to (a) apply more than one genre tag, on a per-track basis, and (b) add inferencing logic (i.e. knowledge base style production rules) to genres. So Prog => Rock, Zeuhl => Prog, Progressive Metal => Prog, Metal => Rock, Death Metal => Metal, Technical Death Metal => Death Metal, Progressive Metal => Metal, Technical Death Metal => Progressive Metal would form a typical genre sublattice, for example.

So... My first questions are:

1) Does JRiver read and import all of the iTunes tags? I need them all. For audio files of radio plays, I have even appropriated some that are normally used for TV shows as a way of tagging episodes of, for example, The Shadow. I've also done this with concert recordings.
2) Is there some equivalent to imposing a sort order on one field through another (potentially empty) field?
3) Are there codecs for .m4a (MP4 audio stream)?
4) Can this program be used to sync the iPod Classic 160G?
5) When importing, does JRiver leave the files in place, or make copies of them?
6) Is it possible to write scripts of some sort to extract the key/value pairs from the "Comments" field into their own first-class DB fields?
7) Is it possible to create one-to-many, many-to-one, or many-to-many relations in the JRiver DB? How? (Do we have more than one table? Can we build a schema?)
8 ) Can I create recursively-triggered calculated fields?
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blgentry

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Re: Switching from Winamp or iTunes
« Reply #17 on: November 16, 2015, 04:45:13 pm »

You've got a lot of well considered questions.  I'll take a crack at a few of them.

1) Does JRiver read and import all of the iTunes tags? I need them all. For audio files of radio plays, I have even appropriated some that are normally used for TV shows as a way of tagging episodes of, for example, The Shadow. I've also done this with concert recordings.

I don't think so, but it should get a LOT of them.  Since you're mainly using ALACs, I think you've got a better chance than if you were using MP3s.  Don't let this discourage you though!  You can probably get most of your important tags sent over, and perhaps fudge some of the others.  The good news is, you can try this, for free, using MC's 30 day free trial.  MC works 100% during the trial without any crippling of features.

Quote
2) Is there some equivalent to imposing a sort order on one field through another (potentially empty) field?

Sure; that's super easy.  In any view, just click on Sort By and choose your field.  It doesn't even have to be a visible field.

Quote
3) Are there codecs for .m4a (MP4 audio stream)?

MC plays just about any audio format.  M4A as AAC and M4A as ALAC are both supported.

Quote
5) When importing, does JRiver leave the files in place, or make copies of them?

MC imports "in place" and will not move or copy any files unless you explicitly tell it to.  BTW, MC includes a tool called the Rename, Move, and Copy tool.  It can be used to move selected files (1, 2, 3, 100, 1000, etc) to new locations based on rules you give it.  So RM&C might be very useful for copying or moving your multiple separate disks full of songs to a new location.

Quote
6) Is it possible to write scripts of some sort to extract the key/value pairs from the "Comments" field into their own first-class DB fields?

Scripts:  Not natively.  But MC does have an Expression Language, which is fairly sophisticated.  I'd need to see examples to be sure, but I'm 90% sure we can handle extracting key/value pairs.  It will almost certainly require several passes.  At least one pass per key is my guess.  I'd be willing to try to help you develop some expressions to do this work.  Expressions can act on many files at once, or just a few, or just one.  So it's *almost* like scripting.

Quote
8 ) Can I create recursively-triggered calculated fields?

MC supports calculated fields for sure.  It will reject circular references.  As a test of cascaded calculated fields, I just created three fields:  ONE, TWO, and THREE.  TWO = 2 * ONE.  THREE = 3 * TWO .  I then added some values for ONE in a few files.  It calculated TWO and THREE correctly.  So ONE = 20 => TWO = 40, THREE = 120 .  The short answer appears to be YES.

You might start a new thread or two on specific topics if you need more help with them.

Brian.
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chromedigi

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Re: Switching from Winamp or iTunes
« Reply #18 on: November 16, 2015, 04:54:32 pm »

I don't think so, but it should get a LOT of them.

Why would it miss any? (And as a feature on this product, considering the vast number of iTunes users out there, it shouldn't miss any, ever.)

MC plays just about any audio format.

That's only half the battle (the "dec" part). How about ripping them (the "co" part)?

Scripts:  Not natively.

It doesn't have to be native. Can I script the app using C#, for example?

It will reject circular references.

Then, no, it can't do recursion. Which, given that I didn't find a conditional operator in the expression language in my first cursory perusal, isn't surprising. You've got to be able to code a termination condition, and you can't do that without a cond of some sort.
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blgentry

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Re: Switching from Winamp or iTunes
« Reply #19 on: November 16, 2015, 05:31:32 pm »

Why would it miss any? (And as a feature on this product, considering the vast number of iTunes users out there, it shouldn't miss any, ever.)

I don't know exactly what fields MC can and can not see in each media type.  To try to help you, I just ripped a few tracks to ALAC with itunes, and set the 4 sort order fields on those tracks.  Then I imported them into MC.  After creating the appropriate fields, MC can see Album Sort Order and Artist Sort Order.  It missed Composer sort and Album Artist Sort.

In general, you must create corresponding fields in MC's database to receive the values from the fields in the files you are importing.

Quote
That's only half the battle (the "dec" part). How about ripping them (the "co" part)?

You may not realize that your tone seems to be challenging and/or demanding.  Perhaps you don't mean it that way.  I'm just a regular guy that likes MC and I'm trying to help you out.  :)

That said, MC can rip FLAC, MP3, and I *think* ALAC.  I'm not sure because I don't use that function of MC.  I use third party tools to rip discs and MC imports them using auto import.

Quote
It doesn't have to be native. Can I script the app using C#, for example?

MC has a C++ API for it's Core Commands.  But that's separate from the Expression Language.  I don't think the Core Commands API will do what you're looking to do, which is to manipulate tags.

http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Media_Center_Core_Commands

The expression language is probably more like what you want.

Quote
Then, no, it can't do recursion. Which, given that I didn't find a conditional operator in the expression language in my first cursory perusal, isn't surprising. You've got to be able to code a termination condition, and you can't do that without a cond of some sort.

You'd have to test it to see.  The Expression Language *does* have conditionals.

http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Expression_Language#Conditional_Functions

What you've described about your genre tree structure is kind of confusing (to me), and I'm guessing this is what you want the calculated fields for?  MC is incredibly powerful and there are ways to do many, many things that people want to do with it.  There may be a way to do what you're after.  If you describe it, someone may be able to help you.

Brian.
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chromedigi

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Re: Switching from Winamp or iTunes
« Reply #20 on: November 16, 2015, 06:29:18 pm »

In general, you must create corresponding fields in MC's database to receive the values from the fields in the files you are importing.

Does this mean that I define the field before I do the import? If so, how does it know which field to import each tag into? Do they have to have identical names, or is there some way to define a mapping?

Quote
You may not realize that your tone seems to be challenging and/or demanding.  Perhaps you don't mean it that way.

I don't, and I'm sorry I gave you that impression. I just think that transitioning from iTunes ought to be a lossless process; iTunes is the gorilla in the room, after all.

Quote
I use third party tools to rip discs and MC imports them using auto import.

Why do you choose to do it that way? Do you have tools that have better error detection/correction capabilities? If so, what do you use?

Quote
MC has a C++ API for it's Core Commands.  But that's separate from the Expression Language.  I don't think the Core Commands API will do what you're looking to do, which is to manipulate tags.

I will look into this. Thanks for the pointer.

Quote
The Expression Language *does* have conditionals.

I knew my first look was too cursory. This is a very complex package, and a lot to take in all at once. And I'm just trying to preflight some of my issues before biting the bullet, because no matter what I do, it will be a long, tedious process. But it helps to have a good plan, so as to minimize redoing things.

Quote
What you've described about your genre tree structure is kind of confusing (to me), and I'm guessing this is what you want the calculated fields for?

I understand. It's hard to describe the lattice of a simple production system; much easier to draw one. But if you have familiarity with an object-oriented programming language, the idea is a lot like multiple inheritance.


When I say something like A => B, that's an implication rule meaning that if I know A, I can conclude B. So if I were to mark something as "Zeuhl," it would also come up in a search for "Prog" or "Rock." Granted, this sort of thing can be done with a preprocessor, by explicitly populating a field with all of the implied tags, but that is brittle, and makes modifying your lattice much more difficult than if these things can be calculated on the fly.

Honestly, I didn't expect that I'd be able to accomplish this, but it's been on my wish list for ages, and you never know. This system looks pretty powerful, so I thought I'd raise the question.

I also thought that these questions would be answered by an employee of the company: tech support or dev. I very much appreciate your efforts to help out.

I'm also still wondering about whether this is a truly relational DB, or if everything's stuffed into one table. I'm getting the impression that it's the latter. But it would be very cool if one could build a schema in the thing.
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RoderickGI

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Re: Switching from Winamp or iTunes
« Reply #21 on: November 16, 2015, 06:44:20 pm »

Brian has done a great in answering most of your questions. At a first read through, I think you will be very happy with MC.

Your requirement for a Genre Sublattice, and the many-to-many field relationships may be an issue, but that doesn't mean what you are trying to achieve can't be done in MC. Basically you are asking for a technical capability, rather than the support of an outcome. You may need to rethink the method you need to use to support the outcome.

I was pretty comfortable with all of your other requirements, but like Brian I don't know if MC will import all iTunes tags. However, I do know that the issue has been discussed extensively in the forum, and solutions are available for getting all the tags into MC. I think, depending exactly on how you have structured your tags in iTunes, and how you decide to structure MC for your collection, you may need to do a little work outside MC and iTunes to transfer the tags.


As you are a very experienced iTunes user, with very specific requirements, I suggest that you proceed by researching your specific requirements, such as iTunes tags, in the forum particularly, and also in the Wiki. Do note that a lot of the Wiki is a bit out of date, but out of date articles are often marked as such, and/or MC version numbers are associated with the article.

Particularly looks at the Expression Language, and how people have used it, MCWS (Media Center Web Service), and MCC (Media Center Core) Commands. Also View creation, particularly Pane Views, Smartlists, User Library Fields (including relational field settings). In fact, have a look through all of the Developer Zone. The MC isn't a relational database in what I consider the traditional sense, so don't expect to have a tool that shows the schema and allows the creation of additional tables and so on. But it does allow one-to-many relational fields.

Brian didn't answer this question;
"4) Can this program be used to sync the iPod Classic 160G?"
I think the answer is generally yes, but there are some caveats. Research Handheld Devices and the iPod Classic 160G in the forum and Wiki.

Once you have a bit of an idea about what MC can do, and how you would use it, then I suggest you download the 30 day trial, and test everything you can in that time. Even if you are unsure at the end, for such a large collection, and for the advantage of bringing that collection all into one database, the purchase price of MC just to complete the evaluation it isn't that high.

You are about to do a major software and collection upgrade. It is going to take time and effort. You should design how you want to use MC, probably by running a small collection in parallel to iTunes, and make all the library changes, views, expressions etc. that you want, before migrating the full collection. Design the migration once, do it right.

JRiver is a small company, and doesn't charge much for an excellent product, so they can't support a full presales process answering complex questions for everyone. They rely on the forum and experienced users to assist with such questions. Although you will see the developers answering a lot of questions on the forum, often. JRiver is very responsive that way.

Good luck, and enjoy!

PS: In case you were wondering, you posted while I was typing, and it looks like we said similar things.
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mwillems

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Re: Switching from Winamp or iTunes
« Reply #22 on: November 16, 2015, 06:48:34 pm »

FWIW the genre tag in MC supports both list type entries and hierarchical entries in any combination and at several levels of depth.  The semi-colon is the list separator, the backslash is the hierarchical "subordinator."

So for example, you can tag something as "Rock\Prog" and MC will interpret that (by default in views) as a main genre Rock and subgenre Prog; by contrast "Rock; Prog" is two distinct top level genres.  Searching either term will yield the album in either arrangement.  But you can get arbitrarily complex with it, for example you could tag something straddling the line between fusion and prog as "Jazz\Fusion; Rock\Prog" and so on.  Multiple levels of indenture can be specified without any limitation that I'm aware of.  I have tracks and albums that have five or more genres each replete with sub-genres, etc.  

You mention that populating a field is "brittle;" you can use other tags as a source for calculating [Genre] either on a one time basis or on the fly.  A word of warning though: having a lookup/calculated field (every time) rather than a static value (however derived) generally causes a hit in database performance (sometimes a significant one with large collections or weak hardware), so it's generally a good idea (especially with very large collections) to try and populate the fields directly whenever feasible.  That said, MC excels at large collections.  I have about 60K files, but many folks here have well more than 100K and a few users have had half a million or so.  For me, with 60K and very limited calculated fields it's very, very fast, but you'll see what your hardware and the size of your collection will allow.

Also not a dev, just an enthusiast.  
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JimH

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Re: Switching from Winamp or iTunes
« Reply #23 on: November 16, 2015, 07:06:00 pm »

I just think that transitioning from iTunes ought to be a lossless process; iTunes is the gorilla in the room, after all.
Maybe, maybe not.
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chromedigi

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Re: Switching from Winamp or iTunes
« Reply #24 on: November 16, 2015, 07:10:18 pm »

FWIW the genre tag in MC supports both list type entries and hierarchical entries in any combination and at several levels of depth.  The semi-colon is the list separator, the backslash is the hierarchical "subordinator."

Although this doesn't provide the full generality of a lattice, it may be good enough. I'm used to having to compromise with my tools. Lord knows, iTunes itself is far from ideal, and a number of the things that power users do with it are, to be honest, kludges.
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blgentry

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Re: Switching from Winamp or iTunes
« Reply #25 on: November 16, 2015, 07:19:09 pm »

Does this mean that I define the field before I do the import? If so, how does it know which field to import each tag into? Do they have to have identical names, or is there some way to define a mapping?

You can define the fields before import or after.  If you define them after, you just have to tell MC to re-read the tags with Library Tools > Update Library (from tags).  Then it will read the tags again and assign any new or different ones to it's own Library fields.  The names must match exactly.  There is no mapping function that I'm aware of.  That being said, you could certainly use calculated fields to automatically copy and/or merge one or more fields into fields with names you like better.  Or you can do it manually from time to time with expressions.

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I don't, and I'm sorry I gave you that impression. I just think that transitioning from iTunes ought to be a lossless process; iTunes is the gorilla in the room, after all.

Cool.  :)  Itunes is certainly a beast.  I think JRiver has spent a good bit of time on itunes integration tools in the past (mostly for ipod support) and have been burned pretty hard by Apple changing things with no notice.  I'm just guessing here as to why there aren't specific itunes migration tools. 

I just thought of something:  MC can read XML playlists exported by itunes.  I think those XML files may have more metadata than the tags in the files.  I've just done an experiment or two, but it's kind of confusing and I don't have any conclusions.

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Why do you choose to do it that way? Do you have tools that have better error detection/correction capabilities? If so, what do you use?

Several reasons.  I started ripping discs before I had MC and I had an established method that worked well.  I run MC on a Mac (not on Windows); the support for ripping CDs there has been sort of spotty and didn't work well during my small amount of testing.  I use a Mac specific program called XLD.

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I'm also still wondering about whether this is a truly relational DB, or if everything's stuffed into one table. I'm getting the impression that it's the latter. But it would be very cool if one could build a schema in the thing.

As far as I can tell MC does not use a "real" relational database.  It seems to use something that's heavily indexed ala an ISAM type database.  It's really fast!  It's relational modifier in the field types appears to allow one to say "this field can have only one value for an Artist".  Or Album, or Series.  So not exactly relational.  But, as Roderick said, there's more than one way to skin a cat and get what you're after.

For example, you can create as many new fields as you want.  Does a subgenre field make sense for you?  How about supergenre?  Both?  Create and use them.  You can sort on anything, including sorting on multiple fields (first this field, then that field, and so on).

Good luck and let us know if we can help.

Brian.
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chromedigi

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Re: Switching from Winamp or iTunes
« Reply #26 on: November 16, 2015, 08:11:30 pm »

I think JRiver has spent a good bit of time on itunes integration tools in the past (mostly for ipod support) and have been burned pretty hard by Apple changing things with no notice.

This doesn't surprise me. I was an Apple dev in the '90s, and got screwed over by them myself more than once. I hate them. (Though I do hold their stock, and they make me money - no complaints there. However, other than my iPod, I steadfastly avoid their product line. Windows computers. Android phone. Freedom.) But in any case, iPods were, and iPhones are ubiquitous, and most everybody who has one just uses iTunes without considering the alternatives. It's a huge installed base, and if it's difficult or inscrutable to move from iTunes to this product, there will be that many fewer people who even make the attempt.

Grabbing tags is easy. If you can get one, you should be able to get them all. A few years ago, I obtained a document detailing their tag implementation because I was at the time considering building a fully relational DB in Access parallel to my iTunes library, and linking the two via foreign keys embedded in the Comments field. Though I no longer have the doc to hand at the moment, the tag structure is really no big deal.
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fgs6017

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Re: Switching from Winamp or iTunes
« Reply #27 on: September 12, 2016, 02:59:51 pm »

Im thinking of the switch to jriver from itunes in order to grow into hi res properly. Question. I play the music nas files via nettop pc, but i rip to the nas in a different room on desktop, so does the download include just one device/pc because then i would need to have another ripping software which ideally i wouldnt want to do.
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BradATIMA

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Re: Switching from Winamp or iTunes
« Reply #28 on: September 13, 2016, 03:35:33 pm »

You can use a single license for multiple computers, within reason. You can find more information on licenses here: http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Restoring_a_License
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